Stop the press, everyone! While it’s only February, I already know that one of my favourite 2019 hobby moments has already happened. So what is this about?

We are probably all familiar with very spontaneous events that just come completely out of the blue, right?

Nah, not quite like that…

Well, just the other day, I returned home to find a suspicious package from the Netherlands waiting for me. It was from my buddy Augustus b’Raass, who had vaguely mentioned planning to send over what he dubbed a “care-package”, so that had to be it — “Cool, a bitz drop!”, I thought. Those are always a nice surprise!

But then I was instantly blown away when I opened the package and out came an entire squad of expertly converted, beautifully painted World Eaters Khorne Berzerkers:

Now these used to belong to Augustus’ World Eaters army, a brilliant collection of models that I was lucky to see from up close during my visit to Amsterdam in 2017:

In fact, they were the first proof of concept squad of World Eaters he built when starting his Khornate army. Going back through his posts from that time over at The Bolter & Chainsword made me realise that I posted lots of feedback and advice on this very squad — and loved every second of it. And now they were standing on the tabletop before me — NUTS!

I didn’t find an invoice either, so I guess Augustus really wants me to just have these — what an incredible gift! And almost in time for this blog’s seventh birthday, no less! Come to think of it, it’s actually not the first time for stunning World Eaters models to arrive just in time for Eternal Hunt’s anniversary…

Fortunately enough, most of the models had survived their voyage unscathed: I had to re-attach some lost heads and backpacks, but most of the models didn’t look any worse for wear.

Unfortunately, one of the guys had lost his two-handed chainsword…

I guess it must have been confiscated at the border 😉

As a true follower of Khorne, however, I always have a well stocked collection of vicious, spiky weapons, so the damage was easily repaired:

The dynamism of the models is actually one of their strongest parts: Augustus has done a fantastic job of making them look like raging monsters running full tilt at their enemy — and he has actually turned a fault into a virtue, as I remember him complaining that he only had running Mk. III legs to work with…

Indeed, the models are mostly made from Mk. III armour parts, World Eaters conversion bits and chainaxes (all from Forgeworld), as well as some Skullcrusher and diverse chaos bitz thrown into the mix — in fact, there are so many little tweaks and conversions that just the process of (re)discovering them all made for a pretty enjoyable afternoon! All of this makes for a truly stunning squad:

Or rather, even more, if you want to be exact about it: At ten models, with two icons and two suitable berzerker champions, there are two squads of five berzerkers to be had here:

Each squad also features its own, custom icon bearer:

The guy on the right is just stunning, isn’t he?

And while it’s hard to call favourites, with models this good, I have an especially soft spot for Arekh Haar (left) and the other probable berzerker champion — in fact, the latter may even be my absolute favourite, because his pose is just brilliant (and serves as a fantastic counterpoint for the rest of the running madmen in the squad):

So what can I say? I was blown away by this turn of events, and I am just really, really grateful! Augustus, buddy, thank you so much! Those guys will be getting a place of honour in my collection and, should it ever come to it, the 4th assault company’s battle line!

So that’s it for this week! As I’ve mentioned, next week will mark the blog’s seventh anniversary, so make sure to tune in — I have something pretty cool to share with you!

Until then, I would love to hear your thoughts on these new members of Khorne’s Eternal Hunt! You should also make sure to check out Augustus’ brilliant, ongoing hobby thread here! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more! 🙂

So there I was, after last week’s post, with my aquila lander for Azazel’s terrain challenge all primed and ready to go — and then something just jumped the queue. It’s still a terrain project, however, after a fashion. And I am confident it’ll make another fitting entry for the community challenge. So what is this about?

A bit more than two years ago, I converted and painted a model that still stands as one of my proudest hobby achievements: My interpretation of Angron, Primarch of the World Eaters, in his ascended form as a Daemon-Primarch of Khorne:

I am still extremely proud of the model, which inspired several blog posts and was, itself, part of an even bigger project to build models to represent Angron at different moments in his violent life.

Anyway, you can find out more about the process of creating Daemon-Primarch Angron here. The truth of the matter, however, was that more than two years later, the model still wasn’t completely finished.

You see, back when I built the base for my Daemon-Primarch version of Angron, it was planned as a modular display base, based on the shattered Imperial aquila terrain piece from the Honoured Imperium kit.

The actual base for Angron himself was, carefully and painstakingly, sawn out of the original terrain piece:

At the same time, I added two more Ultramarines to the bigger part of the display, in order to create a small mini-diorama of the XII Legion Primarch slashing through the remains of an Ultramarines squad. Something like this:

Alas, that modular piece was never finished, as I kept telling myself I would just quickly paint it up at a later point — I should really have listened to my buddy Augustus b’Raass who told me that I should not put it off for too long, lest I end up taking years to finish it. Which is precisely what happened…

But when I took a look at the unpainted base last week, I felt the need to finally finish it and give Angron his proper display — if nothing else, I wanted to have the model completely finished before GW decides to release an official model for Angron in his 40k form…

With both the actual terrain and two Ultramarines models left to complete, this was actually a pretty substantial hobby endeavour, but I surprised myself by actually making fairly quick work of it.

First up were the actual aquila base and the kneeling Ultramarine who is lining up a last shot at the Primarch:

I went for the same scratched and scuffed armour look I had aready used on the unlucky bisected officer held in Angron’s right fist, to create the impression the scene was set during a grueling battle. Due to the slightly 30k-styled Armour of the Ultramarines, this could be set either in the 30k timeframe (at the very end of the Shadow Crusade, upon Angron’s “ascension”) or during any of the following millennia, up to “current-day” 40k.

The Ultramarine standard to the right of the Marine actually mirrors an identical piece appearing on the base of my Forgeworld Angron:

The most complicated part of the paintjob was, ironically enough, to match the colour of the right side of the aquila to that appearing on the smaller part of it that makes up Daemon-Angron’s base, something that would, of course, have been trivially easy, had I painted it all in one go…

As you can see, that left only the fallen Marine in the middle (actually one of the Marine’s from the stock base of Forgeworld’s Angron), and I quickly painted that last model over the weekend.

Of course I made sure to create a suitable bloodstain on the ground, before gluing down the model:

So without further ado, here’s the finished display base, showing a charging Lord of the XII Legion and the courageous, if ill-fated, last stand of an Ultramarines squad:

Here’s a view from the unlucky survivor’s perspective…

I really feel I am giving the Ultramarines a fair shake here, in spite of everything: That last guy looks dead set not to abandon his position and to fight to his last, which seems very much in character for the legion. I feel this also prevents the dead smurfs from just feeling like gratuitous splatter effects. And after all, it’s Angron we are talking about here — there was always going to be blood, right? 😉

And of course the whole ensemble is still modular, allowing me to use Angron on his own, smaller base:

Here are some additional detail shots showing off various parts of the finished piece:

It feels great to finally have finished the complete piece – and also the last part of my little collection, or “Massacre”, of Angrons! The modular display bases for Forgeworld’s Horus Heresy characters were an inspiration for this, and now it definitely seems like a FW base turned up to eleven.

Now for that aquila lander… 😉

Anyway, that’s it for today. I would, of course, love to hear your thoughts about the finished piece, so please leave a comment! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

So here we are, with the old year firmly behind us. I have to admit that I am currently still at the stage, fairly early in the year, where I keep throwing around ideas and messing with different projects until something sticks and I find just the thing to re-start my proper creative process. So for now, I have decided to mess around with some neglected models, seeing how getting long neglected stuff painted was such a successful part of 2018. So let’s take a look at my laboratory:

I. Crash and burn

Here’s the first thing I am currently working on, a contribution for the monthly hobby challenge over at Azazel’s blog, Terrain is the name of the game this time around, which provided me with the perfect reason to tackle something I have wanted to do for ages: Finally getting some paint on the crashed aquila lander from the old Battle for Maccrage boxed set:

I’ve had those pieces for ages, courtesy of my cousin Andy, and as you can see, some of them have been subjected to a prior, mostly unsuccessful attempt at painting them — seriously, what was I thinking?

Now for the second attempt, I’ve made some small tweaks to the piece with the cockpit:

Something that has always bothered me about this otherwise cool terrain piece is its complete hollowness, so I knew I needed to add in a pilot as well as the suggestion of a cockpit, so I whipped something up with a couple of leftover bitz:

It’s not that easy to make sense of what the pilot looks like right now, but I took a lot of inspiration from the pilot morbäck built for his fantastic “Scarabée Intrépide” conversion a couple of years back — I didn’t sweat the details, though, knowing that only a part of the pilot would really be visible inside the finished cockpit. Oh, and while I was at it, I also glued in some bitz to suggest cockpit controls — I’ll show off the whole assembly once the model has been painted!

Anyway, the lander’s complete “hollowness” also leads to the rear of the piece ending in a massive hole. Of course I had to close that off as well, both to make it look less awkward overall and to camouflage the fact that there’s no fully realised interior, nor a full cockpit, as I merely built the parts that you can see from the outside. So I added in a hatch (from an old model truck kit) and tied it into the rest of the design with a few bitz:

While the whole ensemble looks pretty improvised when you look behind the curtain, so to speak,…

…the rear hatch has the added benefit of covering it all up, so when the terrain piece sits on a flat surface, you only really see the elements you are supposed to see.

Everything has already been undercoated, which ties it all together rather nicely:

Now to get it all painted in time for the challenge! I’ll be taking quite a few cues from Ian Wilson’s absolutely fantastic “re-assembled” Aquila lander here, among other sources. Wish me luck! 🙂

II. Big time!

And while I was already hard at work breathing some life into ancient projects, I came across another straggler from my cupboard of shame: A couple of years ago, I dug this out of a box of odds and ends over at my FLGS:

In case anyone’s wondering, this is half of one of the old 54mm Inquisitor models that GW released alongside the original game back in the late 90s. The character in question was Delphan Gruss, a Magos explorator of the Adeptus Mechanicus, basically the only AdMech model readily available back then, long before the AdMech became a playable 40k faction. Here’s the complete stock model:

As you can see, the parts I had were in a pretty sorry state (caked in the thick remains of a prior paintjob, and glued together with hell’s own superglue), and the model was also missing its legs. The problem with 54mm models is, obviously, that in order to replace missing parts, you either need a supply of 54mm bitz, or you need to get creative. In my case, I chose a solution in-between those two options, but the model still didn’t go anywhere for years. But after seeing PowerHungryMonkey’s recent Tech-Marine conversion, I somehow felt drawn back to the old model, and have managed to give him legs (and a pretty impressive gun to boot). Take a look:

Did anyone recognise those “new” legs? They actually came from the somewhat infamous vintage Nagash model, often seen as one of GW’s worst models of all time:

I have to admit, however, that I have a bit of a soft spot for the model: Nagash was actually the first big multipart metal model I ever bought from GW, and also the first model at that scale I have ever painted — and for a while there, I thought both the sculpt as well as my paintjob were absolutely rad! I blame my love for Masters of the Universe as a kid — those who grew up oving Skeletor as a villain had no choice but to like a character with a skull face.

And back when I got those Delphan Gruss bitz, I rediscovered the different parts of poor old Nagash in my bitzbox and thought the legs might work — as an added bonus, a conversion using Nagash as a base did indeed appear in the original rulebook…

Another fun fact: I’ve been keeping off this particular project for so long that I have actually managed to obtain a complete, boxed as new Delphan Gruss in the interim — all the more reason, however, to make sure this model looks suitably different from the stock model, eh?

I rather like the more subdued pose, to be honest. Oh, and the backpack is just the strangest amalgamation of bitz, to create something that looks suitably tech-y and AdMech, and at the right scale, no less: Underneath it all is actually a Space Marine plasma gun backpack (from the plasma gunner that came with Dark Vengeance), while the weapon system was simply made by combining half a Heldrake foot and one of the smaller gun arms from the Kataphron kit. And I added some suitable bits and bobs, such as an omnispex array from the Centurions, some cabling, stuff like that.

Even if thi should stay a one-off 54mm project, painting the Magos should still be a rather interesting experience — plus I am pretty sure I’ll get quite some mileage out of that modern AdMech decal sheet 😉

III. Daemonic desktop infestation imminent!

Waiiit, you didn’t think we’d bypass the ruinous powers, did you? No way! Because while I was wildly fluttering around in “crazy hobby butterfly mode”, something unwholesome from the warp has started to “manifest” on my desktop…

Still very early days, admittedly, but this should be interesting as well…

So as you can see, I am just trying different things before committing to the next bigger project. So keep watching this place to see those three projects – plus half a dozen others, I’d imagine – take shape. Or not. Anyway, I would love to hear your thoughts on these current “sketches”, so feel free to leave a comment!

First of all, happy new year again, and welcome to the second installment of the 2018 Eternal Hunt Awards, in which I will be taking a look back at my personal hobby year — as everybody else on the internet seems to be doing this week 😉

Still, I hope you will indulge me — if nothing else, 2018 was a pretty successful hobby year for me, and I am rather proud of my output. There were also some hobby moments of note that I would like to share with you. And no recap would be complete without a couple of ideas – and, indeed, resolutions, for the new year, so there’s that, too.

So one of my goals for 2018 was definitely to get more stuff painted, with an added sub-goal of trying to make a dent in my back catalogue of neglected, woefully unpainted models. And looking at my 2018 hobby results today, I can say that the mission has been accomplished. Here are all the models I have managed to paint in 2018:

That’s 52 models, all in all, one for each week of the year — although, to be perfectly honest, my output was heavily front-loaded 😉

Now I do of course realise that this is not an award winning number by any stretch of the imagination — so many hobbyists I follow have managed to paint upwards of 200 models last year, while fellow hobbyist Azazel, almost insultingly, manages to finish my yearly amount of painted models every other month (!), but I am still very pleased with the above tableau of finished pieces.

What’s more, about half of those models are indeed pieces that had been sitting unpainted (if not unloved!) in my cupboard of shame — for years, in many cases!

By the same token, 2018’s big hobby lesson was that to keep painting on a constant basis leads to it actually feeling much less like a chore: Before, I would often find myself looking forward to having the actual finished models, while dreading the way towards that goal. These days, however, I realise that I am looking forward to the actual painting process, to be able to try new stuff, more and more often — not nearly often enough, mind you, but it’s a start! 🙂

Thanks for this development must go to Azazel, again, for his wonderfully inclusive monthly hobby challenges that have truly become a pillar of the community — the fact that they get mentioned as a positive influence on dozens of blogs should be more than enough proof of that fact, and funnily enough, the January challenge has me looking forward to crossing another unfinished item off my inventory list. So cheers for that, mate!

The other big incentive to keep painting were my regular painting sessions with my good friend Annie: It’s so much easier to keep beavering away at frustrating detail work while sitting across from someone who is doing the same, being able to share friendly quips, hobby advice or ideas — and then eating huge piles of Greek takeaway food. So many thanks to Annie as well! 🙂

1. Khorne’s Eternal Hunt

Here’s the one possible piece of bad news: I have definitely given my longest running hobby endeavour short shrift this past year, at least from a numbers perspective: only three new models for Khorne’s Eternal Hunt, my World Eaters, in their various incarnations. If nothing else, however, I am still really happy with those three models, though:

In fact, the very first model I painted in January 2018 was a – pretty cool – additon to my (30k) World Eaters, Raud the Hunter, a Legion Contemptor with a chip on his shoulder:

I am still really happy with the model, which is already the second World Eaters Contemptor I have converted from the somewhat bland Betrayal at Calth plastic Contemptor. Raud was supposed to serve as a bridgehead for many painted 30k World Eaters in 2018 — which somehow never came to pass. But we’ll just have to postpone the invasion to 2019 then, eh? 😉

The next model for my World Eaters was also basically my crowning achievement of 2018: The Hound, a renegade Armiger Warglaive, complete with converted cockpit and pilot, completed during the summer as a contribution for the annual ETL event over at The Bolter & Chainsword:

I have loved the Armiger models at first sight, and corrupting one to the service of the ruinous powers was a lot of fun — as was the somewhat fiddly process of wedging a cockpit and pilot into that deceptively small torso 😉 In the end, however, it was all worth it, as I am really proud of the finished model, and it also won me the “Badge of the Artificer”, a B&C forum achievement I had been coveting for years:

In case you are interested, you can read up on the Hound in this post and its follow-ups.

And while we are on the matter of (Not-so) Imperial Knights, I also used the release of the Adeptus Titanicus-scaled Questoris Knights to build yet another “Chibi-Knight”, a smaller version of my Traitor Knight, Gilgamesh, the Warrior King:

And if you’ve been paying attention so far, it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that I felt the absolute urge to somehow build a cockpit and pilot for this model as well:

To discover more (occasionally tiny) details about this projects, check out my posts on Chibi-Gilgamesh 2.0 here,here and here.

2. The world of INQ28

While the World Eaters did not get all that much attention from me last year, I had all the more time to devote to INQ28 characters and retinues, managing to complete no fewer than five warbands, three of which were painted from start to finish. This makes the “INQ28 class of 2018” look rather impressive, if I do say so myself:

Moreover, here’s where my plan to finish long neglected models truly came to fruition. For instance, I finally managed to paint a model that I had been putting off for years for fear of ruining it: Mamzel Elisha Gorgo, an Imperial débutante and psyker in the employ of Inquisitor Gotthardt of the Ordo Hereticus:

This is actually one of my oldest INQ28 projects, with many of the models originating in a time where both my bitz box and conversion prowess were much smaller than they are today, yet I still remain enormously fond of the somewhat swashbuckling, picaresque charm of the warband (and of my resourcefulness at channeling so many of the archetypes from the old Inquisitor rulebook with the bitz available at that time).

Another long-neglected project was the retinue of Inquisitor Nabreus Arslan of the Ordo Hereticus Velsen:

The warband started off as a bit of a reception camp for various older models, some of them still from GW’s metal days, and yet everything came together rather nicely as a pretty unified-looking Hereticus warband: I blazed through all of these models back in February and March, and going full fire and brimstone on them was a lot of fun!

Hot on the heels of Arslan and his operatives came yet another Inquisitorial retinue, namely that of Redactor Orlant of the Ordo Scriptorum:

Orlant started out as a tribute both to fellow hobbyist PDH’s ideas for the Ordo Scriptorum as well as to a particular piece of art by the late, great Wayne England — in fact, the (almost) finished retinue features no less than three distinct shout outs to art by Mr. England. It was also heavily driven by inspiration taken from fellow hobbyists PDH’s and Johannus’ work and from Chris Wraight’s fantastic exploration of Terra, “Vaults of Terra – the Carrion Throne”. Anyway, it’s a warband I am stupidly happy with, and even though it’s still technically missing one final member, the fact remains that I was able to mainly finish the project this year.

Moving from the agents of the Ordos to the somewhat more unsavory corners of the 40k galaxy: I managed to paint a few more models for my gang of underhive malcontents, the Road Crew.

First up, Worker #9, ancient automaton and walking engine of death extraordinaire:

Now this guy had been neglected for a long time, so finally turning him into a wonderfully ramshackle killer robot from the past – and in beautiful scuffed yellow, no less – did feel so very rewarding! More info on Worker #9 can be found here, by the way.

With the big guy serving as a bit of a trailblazer, I also completed some slightly less massive members for the Road Crew. Meet Sawtooth, Cirque and Sarge:

Together, those four models basically round out the crew for now. They do make for a rather distinguished little group, if you don’t mind me saying so:

At the same time, the project is open-ended enough that new models can (and will) always be added to the Road Crew as needed — and as inspiration strikes me. I still have an unpainted ride for them, for one, and both the crazy new Ork vehicles as well as those new Genestealer bikes seem like such a natural eventual addition to a Mad Max style Road Warrior warband. Just sayin’… 😉

And finally, I also explored fairly new territory in painting an entire warband/kill team of loyalist Space Marines. This is Kill Team Ulrach of the Deathwatch:

As I have said before, this project was very much inspired by PDH’s and Jeff Vader’s respective Deathwatch kill teams, and it was a lot of fun to be able to explore various Space Marine chapters and their individual visual identities while also to trying to keep it all nice and straightforward under the Deathwatch’s unifying colour scheme. Now loyalist Space Marines may seem like the least original thing to be painting in this hobby of ours, but the truth is that the project made me truly leave my comfort zone, experimenting with line highlighting, different skin tones and freehanding — plus it also gave me a rather big appreciation of the Primaris models (I still abhor the fluff, though…).

3. On the Blood Bowl pitch

Ever since Annie succeeded at roping me into creating a Blood Bowl team, working on some new Blood Bowl models has always served as a nice way of exploring a somewhat silly and whimsical side of our hobby — plus it’s always a fun thing to be working on during our joint hobby sessions.

Which is why I finally gave my Orkheim Ultraz some much needed attention in 2018, adding a dozen new models to the team:

Staying with pop culture icons for a second, I also made an attempt to bring my favourite infiltrations expert into the 41st millennium:

Those three projects were completed on a whim, and I had a blast doing each of them, simple as that 😉

So that’s my output for 2018. I cannot help but feel a little proud of myself when I look at the colourful gang below. They are only 52 models, but I am happy with each and every one of them.

II. Hobby moments of note

2018 was, again, not completely about painting models, of course. And while it was a somewhat more hermetic year, defined by painting sessions rather than visits abroad or crazy international shenanigans, there were still some moments that I would like to share with you:

1. Learning new techniques

Learning new techniques is always great in our hobby — and should probably come with the territory, come to think of it. Even so, I feel I really pushed myself this year, experimenting with freehanding, exploring different skin tones, mixing my own snow or using a Staedtler micropen to create “quasi-freehand” designs and symbols (an idea courtesy of Jeff Vader, by the way): Those are all small technical tricks and tweaks, but it felt good to be able to add them to my toolbox!

2. Kickstarter

So far, I have been fairly conservative when it came to joining hobby-related Kickstarters, but in 2018, there were two projects that made me take the plunge:

Most of you will probably recognise Dave’s name – and if you don’t, you should definitely check out his blog right away! Dave’s various army projects have been an invaluable fountain of inspiration over the years, so when I found out he was crowdfunding a book about realising army projects, chipping in was basically a no-brainer. My only regret is that the book didn’t arrive in time for Christmas. But it should be here soon, and I am waiting with bated breath — expect a detailed review as soon as I get my hands on my copy of the book!

To be perfectly honest, I really mostly wanted the (Kickstarter-exclusive) model for Aloy, the game’s heroine:

But the campaign basically went through the roof, which will provide me with a whopping hundred or so models — I’ll probably believe it when I see it — but keep your fingers crossed for me, okay? 😉

Also, if you are into gaming at all, make sure to check out Horizon Zero Dawn — seriouly!

3. A Tribute to Wayne England

Now this certainly wasn’t the result of a meticulous plan or anything, but it does make me feel pleased that a part of my hobby output functions as a direct tribute to one of my favourite GW artists of the yesteryear, Mr. Wayne England:

As I’ve said above, three models in Inquisitor Orlant’s retinue are basically direct reproductions of Wayne England’s art (the good Inquisitor among them). It only occured to me later on that the artwork I had based my paintjob of Trooper Gibbson Rikkert was also originally done by Wayne England. And the flying Ordo Hereticus servo-skull carries more than a hint of the angular, hyper-stylised and grimdark Wayne England illustrations from the 90s, such as his crest for the Redemptionist Cult.

For me, John Blanche and Wayne England are basically the alpha and the omega of 40k art (with Jes Goodwin placed right between them as the genius who would always turn their art into beautiful miniature concepts and, more often than not, actual miniatures), so to have them both immortalised now in my collection really pleases me a great deal!

4. Hugs for the Hug Throne!

Another very pleasing project, and also one of my last projects of 2018, to boot: When fellow hobbyist PDH became a father last fall, it was clear to me that I wanted to send him a little surprise for his son, and while it took me until shortly before Christmas to follow through with it, I would like to imagine that I managed to pull it off in style.

You see, I chose to send over a teddy bear. Not exactly winning high marks for originality here, I know. But I wanted to send something typically German, and Steiff is Germany’s oldest toy manufactory (ranging back into the 19th century), and their teddy bears are about as traditionally German as they come. That being said, and given PDH’s and my shared hobby, I felt the bear needed a little…accessory:

And thus was born Beriax the Comforter, who shall deliver HUGS FOR THE HUG THRONE!

The best part, however, was that the package actually managed to make it there in time for Christmas. Peter informed me he had to confiscate the chainaxe, however — it’s probably for the best… 😉

III. Blogging

First of all, the most obvious fact, Eternal Hunt turned six early last year (and will be seven soon), and it’s always astonishing to see how this little blog I started once upon a day is still around — and maybe even thrieving…?

This is at least true from a content perspective: After a less active year of blogging in 2017 – with a mere 25 posts – I tried my best to return to a more regular schedule and more content in 2018, and it worked: Of course more painted models also meant more content to post, and so I ended the year with 40 posts all in all, which was a bit of a return to form.

At the same time, it has become more and more difficult to generate interest in my content, unfortunately: In spite of more content, 2018 was actually the blog’s weakest year since 2014, at least where views are concerned. If you take a look at the statistics, you can clearly see that, allowing for some ups and downs here and there, the views for Eternal Hunt have been in steady decline:

I don’t really want to keep beating a dead horse here, but I am also not going to lie to you: This is pretty frustrating. Like every blogger, I derive much of my motivation to continue blogging from people actually taking an interest, from engaging with my work. And it just gets more and more difficult to achieve just that. On the one hand, it’s clear that this is just part of an overarching trend, with hobby related communication seemingly shifting more and more to Instagram, Facebook or Twitter while forums and blogs suffer a steady decline: If I look at some of my favourite forums online, it’s really rather shocking how slow and quiet things have become, with even some of the hobbyists that used to be mainstays of the community seemingly having departed for good, towards the supposedly greener pastures of Instagram. Fortunately enough, at least the Bolter & Chainsword remains a pretty lively online community, but I definitely fear for some of my other long time haunts…

And while I wasn’t going to join Instagram back in 2017, witnessing Facebook’s actions as a company throughout the year 2018 has only made me more reluctant to give their platforms and services any presence in my private life: I really do not want to support them, even if this very obviously means to be left behind as a part of the hobby scene — at least that’s how it can seem from time to time.

On the other hand, this also means that I am all the more thankful to those of you who still drop by here, who still comment and who still care! Please continue doing that, as it is the very thing that’s keeping this blog – and other places like it – alive. By the same token, I will also endeavour to comment more on other people’s work online. It’s something that sometimes requires a bit of an effort, and it’s all too easy to grow complacent. I know all this from my own experience, which is why I appreciate your comments all the more!

IV. Plans

So what’s in store for 2019, then? While I don’t want to tie myself down or back myself into a corner with too ambitious or detailed plans and schedules, there are of course a couple of things I would like to achieve in the new year:

I’ll definitely need to get some more World Eaters painted, lest the Blood God grow impatient with me. I think I’ll be focusing on my 30k World Eaters for now, though, both because there’s enough unpainted stuff there for me to tackle, but also because I think the small collection of 30k models I have managed to complete so far actually looks pretty cool:

And even though he’s not a World Eater, this plan also extends to my models for Argel Tal that I wanted to paint in 2018 but didn’t: You’ll be painted in the shadow of great wings, buddy 😉

There’s also this duel diorama that I originally build for a challenge at the local Warhammer store, then abandonded, feeling somewhat dejected and disillusioned when the – absolutely awesome – store manager was abruptly let go by GW seemingly without any kind of reason: I really didn’t have an appetite for working on the piece for a good long while, but it’s still a pretty cool diorama, in spite of everything, so onto the 2019 pile it goes:

As for the 40k incarnation of my World Eaters, I think I’ll be waiting for GW to make a move with the legion in the 40k setting: Right now, the World Eaters are in a bit of a limbo, with one of the oldest available plastic kits for their main troop type, and while there have been rumours about all of the cult legions eventually getting the Death Guard treatment, there’s nothing solid to work with as of yet. I want to see what GW is planning for the legion before jumping back in, to be honest.

There’s one certain addition for Khorne’s Eternal Hunt, though: My second converted Armiger Warglaive, and its pilot, the Huntress:

As you’ve maybe seen in my previous post, I have also started working on some Nurglite models recently, so expect to see some more Keepers of the Eternal Garden as well in 2019:

And there’ll be more INQ28 models, obviously — maybe once again with a focus on getting some neglected models and warbands. Believe it or not, there must be about half a dozen unfinished warband projects in my cupboard of shame, so it would be really nice to be able to cross some more off my list of unpainted stuff. Plus there are some pretty cool and creepy characters I would just love to see painted, such as Countess Mandelholtz here:

And thanks to the wonderful marvel of blogging, chances are you’ll be able to check out how it all develops. If you keep reading this stuff. If you keep commenting. I would very much like to invite you to accompany me on this crazy hobby voyage for another year!

Until then, I would love to hear your thoughts on my recap of 2018 and on my plans for 2019, of course!

Welcome everyone to the third and final part of my recent Chibi-Knight project! This has been such a fun little endeavour, and today you finally get to take a look at the finished model, so here goes:

The paintjob for the actual Knight was actually just about finished last time. So here’s where we left off:

This only really left the basing, but since the objective with this entire model was to match the bigger version as closely as possible, I wanted this ethos to extend to the base as well. So for starters, check out the base of the bigger version of Gilgamesh:

As you can see, I used some pieces from the Space Marine statue from the Honoured Imperium terrain kit to represent fallen Imperial monuments, and I really wanted to recreate that look — and it seemed that fate was very much on my side…

I actually realised a long time ago that the aforementioned statue seems to have been created mostly by upscaling existing Space Marine bitz: If you take a closer look, many of the parts of the statue seem to consist of bigger versions of plastic bitz from the company champion that comes as part of the old Space Marine command squad box (incidentally, I am pretty sure the statue’s cape is an upscaled chaos warrior cape, but that’s beside the point). And I actually discovered a while ago that GW used a face very similar – if not identical – to the statue’s face for different kits as well. So it didn’t take much work to collect the pieces that would allow for a very close recreation of my original design for the base. Take a look:

The shield on the left is pretty much the exact same shield also worn by the Honoured Imperium statue. It came from the aforementioned Space Marine command squad kit. The sword is from a plastic Terminator — I’ll admit the company champion’s sword would have been a better fit from a visual standpoint, but the Terminator sword worked better due to its size and proportions. And the head on the right is a piece of a broken Imperial monument from the WFB/AoS giant.

So I used these parts (or rather, copies of these parts) to create a setup that was fairly similar to the original base:

Now I had to improvise a bit, due to the bigger Knight’s base having an oval shape (and hence more room), but I think the setup worked out pretty well. I also chose to have the head in an upright pose this time around — something I should have done on the bigger base as well.

So here’s the base after undercoating…

…and with the Knight provisionally placed on top:

And here’s the finished base, painted to fit the bigger version:

So all that was left was to affix the new Chibi-Gilgamesh to his new home, and then the model was done. So here, once again, the big version for the sake of comparison:

And without further ado, I give you

Chibi-Gilgamesh version 2.0

I am actually really happy with the way the model has turned out. I may have had to compromise a bit here and there because a couple of visual touches from the bigger model just couldn’t be reproduced at the smaller scale (at least not without ending up looking extremely goofy, that is), but you can still tell at a glance that this is supposed to be Gilgamesh at a smaller scale, wouldn’t you agree?

And there’s also my favourite part about this project, the somewhat harebrained, yet ultimately successful, scheme of adding a fully sculpted interior and pilot to a Knight at the Adeptus Titanicus scale. Check out the bigger version of Baron Harrowthorne again:

And here’s the chibi-version:

And now that the new model has been finished, here’s another comparison shot with its predecessor:

As I’ve said before, I really like how the older Chibi-Knight seems to represent the somewhat clunkier vintage Epic 40k design, while the new model fits the sleeker, more faithful designs from the new Adeptus Titanicus.

That’s not quite all, though. Because with the model finished, it was of course time to trot out the actual 28mm Gilgamesh in order to find out how well the new Chibi-Knight stands up to the big guy.

well,…

I think there’s definitely quite a bit of family resemblance, wouldn’t you agree?

Having managed to closely recreate the base also makes me stupidly happy, to be honest 😉

So yeah, a fun project all around! And you know what? I am also going to pledge this little guy as part of Azazel’s Mechanical November ’18 community challenge — fits well enough, I’d say 😉

In any case, it goes without saying that I would love to hear any feedback you might have! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more! 🙂

Hey everyone, here’s the next look at my current project, the recreation of my 28mm Renegade Knight Questoris, Gilgamesh, the Warrior King, at the Adeptus Titanicus scale. I haven’t had much hobby time since my update, but I’ve tried to make it count. So let’s take a look, shall we?

While the similarity between the Adeptus Titanicus Knight Questoris and its bigger 28mm version already astonished me during the building stages, the parallels even extended to the actual painting process: Due to the way the model comes together, it’s actually possible to keep most of the armour plates, especially the big top carapace and shoulder pads, separate from the Knight’s “skeleton” during painting, so it was once again a matter of undercoating the skeleton in silver and the armour plates in red, then work from there.

And since this was my biggest alteration to the stock model, I did of course have to start with the pilot, trying the best I could to have the paintjob make up for the lack of sculpted detail:

Even at this stage, I was already reasonably happy with the way the chibi-version of Baron Harrowthorne looked, so after that, it was mostly a matter of carefully blocking in all of the base colours. Due to the delicate sculpt of the Knight, this was a bit more fiddly than on, say, a bog standard Space Marine model, but it was still fairly quick work. Here’s Chibi Gilgamesh 2.0 with all the base colours and washes in place:

And now came the delightful part: I carefully tried to match as many visual cues from the bigger version as possible — including the decals used on the original Gilgamesh. In some cases, I was able to use smaller decals that were a close – or even perfect – fit, in other cases (on the kneepads, for instance), I had to use a fine liner instead.

But anyway, enough talk, let’s take a look at the mostly finished model:

Just to remind you, here’s the big version:

And here’s what I have right now:

Pretty close, wouldn’t you agree?

As for Baron Harrowthorne and the cockpit, I had to give the area another small round of tweaks, of course:

So, once again, let’s start with the bigger version:

And here’s the Chibi-Baron:

As I’ve said before, since there is so very little actual detail on the pilot, I’ve had to use the paintjob to suggest detail were none extists, and to create an evocation, for lack of a better word, of the much bigger, more detailed 28mm pilot. I am pretty happy with the outcome, though — if you take a closer look you can even see the glowing buttons on the control panel:

And here’s another comparison picture with my earlier Chibi-Knight kitbash:

So a few very minor tweaks notwithstanding, the new Chibi Knight is basically finished at this point — except for the basing, that is, and I do have a rather nifty plan for that. Let’s hope it works out!

Until then, however, I would love to hear what you think! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Hey everyone, still no painted models this week, alas, but rather a small project that had me sidetracked. Small in every sense of the word, actually. So what is this about?

The recently released 2018 version of Adeptus Titanicus has left me weirdly indifferent so far — surprising, really, as I always thought I would be right at the front of the queue if it ever made a return. But the focus on the biggest Titans somehow makes it less interesting to me (even though I’ll readily acknowledge that being able to own multiple Warlords without having to sell a kidney is probably one of the main draws of the game).

That being said, when the AT-scaled Questoris Knights were released, I knew I had to pick up some of them. And at 25 Euros for three, they seemed reasonably priced, so I made the plunge:

What really surprised me was how the detail on these is truly off the charts: It’s almost uncanny how GW has managed to make them resemble the bigger version down to some of the smallest detail. And I found myself regularly having déjà-vu moments while building the first model — it’s that close to it’s bigger kin. And seeing how I was already having those déjà-vues, I started feeling the urge to build a smaller version of my Renegade Knight, Gilgamesh — in fact, some of you might still remember my previous attempt at building a “Chibi-Knight”, roughly at the Adeptus Titanicus scale – from all kinds of odds and ends:

Building that smaller version – dubbed “Chibi-Knight” by me – was a fun project back then, and I think the model still holds up fairly well, all things considered, even if it’s maybe a bit too clunky. But having a base model that was already a fairly perfect representation of an Imperial Knight from the get-go this time around really made me want to one-up my previous effort.

So I got to work, trying to make one of those small Adeptus Titanicus Knights resemble this guy as closely as possible:

And after a bit of messing around, my first WIP looked like this:

Pretty good already, wouldn’t you agree? Here’s a comparison of my first WIP next to the previous, kitbashed Chibi-Knight:

I actually like how the previous versions’s slightly weird proportions make it resemble the visual clunkiness and retro charm of the old Epic 40k models. By the same token – and due to the more delicate sculpt of the AT Knight – coming up with a way to mirror those chaotic decorations was slightly tricky, and had to drop some of the detail that was simply too small to reproduce – or would look weirdly clunky (such as using a Bloodletter face on the gun barrel, for instance). I also got the impression that most 28mm GW bitz are just a tad too big to use on those delicate AT Questoris Knights, so this did take some doing.

In the end, I went for the visual essence of the model, trying to hit enough design cues to make it work, dropping some that were just too much trouble to get right, and figuring out which bitz to use for either.

So here’s the basically finished build for Chibi-Gilgamesh version 2.0 that I have come up with:

All things considered, I think I have managed to come up with a pretty good reproduction of my 28mm Gilgamesh at the smaller scale. But that wasn’t even the end of the project, because during the conversion process, I found myself staring at the Knight’s hollow interior again and again…

…and wondering if maybe….just maybe…

…it would be possible to add a fully realised interior as well — just as I had done on 28mm Gilgamesh.

Sure, the mere concept is a bit ridiculous, but once I had gotten the idea into my head, I realised that there would be no way to weasel out of this challenge: Chibi-Gilgamesh 2.0 needed a cockpit!

Coming up with a pilot was the most challenging part of that, obviously: I thought I was already out of the woods when I remembered some 40+ years-ish old plastic Army Men style soldiers my uncle used to play with as a child, and wanted to use one of those, but they turned out to still be a tad too big. As was a pilot from one of my uncle’s old model planes:

My next idea was to use a Z-scale model train figure — and indeed, those come in all shapes and sizes, even in a sitting position. And they are also readily available online. In batches of one hundred, no less!

In the end, that would have included purchasing them in China, however, and it just didn’t seem sustainable to pick up something so cheap and minuscule from halfway across the planet. So I was already planning a visit to the local model train shop when another idea struck me: I remembered one of the old plastic Bretonnian Knights from an old WFB starter box having a stylised little person as their heraldic helmet crest — maybe at just the right scale?

When I dug out the bit from my cupboard of shame, I realised the figure was pretty much the right scale indeed — but alas, it was a Lady of the Lake style sculpt:

Space Marine helmet included for scale.

Very fitting for Bretonnians, no doubt, but not a particularly good match to recreate my Baron Harrowthorne model at a smaller scale. But maybe there was still something there that I could use? So I shaved off most of the detail from the helmet crest, until I was left with only the bare outline of the model, then tried to carve it into a rough incarnation of Gilgamesh’s pilot:

If nothing else, I was able to leave the suggestion of facial features in place. And I realised I had the beginnings of a pilot.

The cockpit, on the other hand, was almost trivially easy to build: I used some tech-y leftover bitz (from a Heldrake foot, IIRC) for the reactor section…

…and if you take a closer look, you’ll see that I even included a small control panel for the pilot:

So here’s another comparison shot for you: The 28mm version of the cockpit and pilot:

And my WIP version at the Adeptus Titanicus scale:

Of course I realised that the pilot was still looking slightly too primitive, so I added some tweaks to him, greenstuffing in the tiniest shoulder pads and placing some teeny tiny plastic nubs on the model to suggest both the medals on the bigger version’s chest as well as the cranial augmetic implants:

The rest of the detail will be suggested by the paintjob — at least that’s what I hope! Now in all fairness, the pilot is probably still a tad too big, but there’s just no way I can come up with an even smaller version, so I’ll call this conversion a success!

This has been such a fun little project — and given the size of the model, I hope it’ll be easy enough to paint up as well. Maybe this could even be the model to get me out of my recent painting slump? Keep your fingers crossed for me! 🙂

In any case, that’s it for today’s update. It should go without saying that I am looking forward to any feedback you might have. And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more! 🙂

A quote:

You fools! Your gods have blinded you with visions of glory and power, of a golden future that awaits you in their service. But our lord has shown us more than you could ever imagine. There are no empires awaiting you. In the endless cold between the stars, there is only the hunter and his prey. And those who were once the former and are now the latter. All that remains is the hunt, for only the hunt is eternal.